A lot of L.A. folks drink and drive. Here's an example of what can go terribly wrong. TMZ.com posted this videotape of an emotional confrontation early Wednesday morning after a driver hit a pedestrian outside STK with an SUV and drove off.
Yes, Jack Nicholson showed up after the Laker game, slightly hoarse, to honor his bud, Warren Beatty, at the 36th annual AFI Life Achievement fete. Count on Beatty, 71, to attract smarter-than-average tributes. "You drag me in with all these politicos," said Nicholson, who earned an Oscar nomination for Beatty's historic drama Reds. "I'm representing all the fair-weather friends you have in the city who went to the Lakers game."
"When I'm working, I have a group of people whose good opinion I'm always trying to win," Beatty said during a taped video interview. Many of that group were on hand Thursday night. "I'm still a liberal when it's coming back in style," he said after accepting his award from last year's honoree, Al Pacino, who starred in Dick Tracy. Beatty thanked his older sister Shirley MacLaine for leading him to Hollywood, which in turn brought him to his wife, Annette Bening. (Variety's Steve Chagollan profiles Beatty here.) One ex-girlfriend, Reds star Diane Keaton, made an emotional appearance, while another, Julie Christie, appeared on video, praising Beatty for choosing a mate, Bening, who was his equal, "after a fairly thorough search."
Ishtar co-star Dustin Hoffman teased his friend with google trivia, much of it not true, while constantly asking if Nicholson was in the house. "And I was here for dinner," he reminded his friend of 40 years. Hoffman praised Beatty for taking good care of his friends, such as cancer-ridden Hal Ashby, who Beatty flew via Warner Bros. jet to Johns Hopkins for treatment.
Beatty's frequent writing collaborator Elaine May did a delicious stand-up routine about Beatty's wacky ideas for such movies as Heaven Can Wait and Reds. May finally talked Beatty into directing Heaven Can Wait himself after no one else wanted to do it. It was the launch of a directing career. "Warren gives crazy a good name," she said. "I feel he is still crazy after all these years."
She was followed by her ex-partner, Mike Nichols, on video, who delivered an hilarious joke about Beatty being Jewish. On video, Barbra Streisand said of Beatty: "He's an incredibly gifted...gentile."
A luminous Jane Fonda started out the evening saying that she knew Warren longer than anyone, 50 years, from his days playing piano bar in New York. "We did our first screen test together," she recalled, a love scene for a Josh Logan movie that never got made. She kicks herself for not realizing at the time that this great-looking man surrounded by smart gay friends was actually straight. "It's nice to know somebody else who shares the same chunk of this town's history," she said.
When Beatty descended from the Kodak stage to the theatre for the ritual walk through his admirers (accompanied by live Earl Scruggs), he greeted politicos George McGovern, for whom he invented the celebrity concert fundraiser in 1972, California attorney general Jerry Brown, and Gary Hart, who admitted later that contrary to myth, he didn't think Warren Beatty ever wanted to be him, but he had always wanted to be Warren Beatty. Republican John McCain paid tribute in a funny clip.
Bill Clinton took the stage and told the story of how at age 26 at the 1972 Democratic convention, he ran into Beatty in an elevator just after an Arkansas delegate told him she'd only vote for McGovern if Beatty walked with her for 30 minutes on a beach. Beatty agreed to the task; she voted for McGovern, and turned up years later on the campaign trail wearing a Hillary Clinton button. "Over all these decades, you have shared with us as moviegoers this insatiable hunger for life," Clinton told Beatty. "You have this unbridled hunger to know and to share."
Beatty joined Bening and his closest friends on the dais, including May and Stanley Donen, Barry Diller, MacLaine, David Geffen, Robert Towne, and attorney Bert Field.
AFI chair and Sony honcho Sir Howard Stringer said that Beatty was "one of the few actors envied when he was single who continued to be envied after he got married. He's America's leading man: actor, producer, writer, director. He quite famously does it all, but not often. Not since George Lucas has a man gotten away with doing so little for such a high honor. You embodied what we wanted in a leading man: handsome, charming, brilliant, perfectionist, always reaching for something greater."
Quentin Tarantino gave a heart-felt intro to Bonnie and Clyde, saying that the 1967 movie launched the great era of American movies, the 70s. "It was a gangster genre film, a Hollywood movie without the cliches."
Faye Dunaway read a rhyming ballad (modeled after Bonnie Parker), praising Beatty, among other things, for having the guts to grab a piece of the back end on Bonnie and Clyde.
Robert Downey Jr. brilliantly hallucinated an evening as a nine-year-old concocting the movie Shampoo with Beatty and Hal Ashby.
Shampoo scriptwriter Towne remembered that it took nine years to get Shampoo made. "I've never known you to hold a grudge, reveal a secret or forget a phone call," he said to Beatty. "In 45 years you never opened yourself up. After all these years I've come to consider you as wise as Benjamin Franklin, who is also a ladies man. You're part Fellini, part Machiavelli."
Don Cheadle described the many-take tortures of working under Beatty's direction on Bulworth. "He never lets the good be the enemy of the great," he said.
The tribute will air June 25 July 8 on the USA Network.
[Photos courtesy Getty Images]
How the 99 Cent Chef was inspired by a screening of Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill! to create a new recipe:
Russ Meyer Lemon Chicken
After filing my various stories, I repaired to the Governor's Ball, where Pink Martini brought a welcome zest to the black-tie affair. At the tables decorated with cut-glass lamps and red roses, the winners and losers were chowing down on Wolfgang Puck's lobster, macaroni and cheese, and baked potatoes and caviar.
Academy executive director Bruce Davis was elated that the show ran only three hours, 20 minutes. The swift pace enabled Gil Cates to bring Once songwriter Marketa Irglova back for her acceptance speech. "That's when you know the producer is cocky about our time, it's never happened in the history of the Oscars," Davis said.
"The Once songwriters provided the best moment of the evening and spontaneity," declared Fox's Tom Rothman. "It's what the Oscars are supposed to be about."
"Jon had less angst," said writer Bruce Vilanch of host Stewart's second outing as host. "He was more relaxed about it and knew what he wanted to do."
Sony's Howard Stringer admired the acceptance speeches, which were "devoid of cliches," he said, "full of entertaining energy."
SPC's Tom Bernard agreed: "The speeches were about the movies," he said, "not kissing the ass of studios and agents. The Academy is trying to focus more attention on the movies and not the people outside the movies."
Picturehouse prexy Bob Berney, celebrating two wins for "La Vie en Rose," credited Marion Cotillard for spending several months in L.A. improving her English as well as the efforts of her CAA agent, Hylda Queally. Cotillard returns to work on Michael Mann's John Dillinger movie "Public Enemies," opposite Johnny Depp, on Tuesday.
The Warners table--complete with heavyweight execs Jeff Bewkes, Barry Meyer and Alan Horn--boasted Michael Clayton winner Tilda Swinton, sitting with her three-year boyfriend Sandro Kopp and agent Brian Swardstrom, who she had thanked in her acceptance speech. "Tilda kept us from getting skunked," said George Clooney, heading out into the night with girlfriend Sarah Larson.
As Swinton left the Ball, some 30 people cheered her as she held up her Oscar. She turned to her boyfriend and cracked, "That's more people than I think have seen Michael Clayton!"
At the end of the night, the Disney/Miramax contingent and many others repaired to the Bar Marmont on Sunset for a loud, raucous party dominated by infectious 80s dance music. Ben Affleck was consoling his brother Casey. Javier Bardem and his pals took over one end of the bar. John Lasseter, Brad Bird, Kathy Kennedy, Frank Marshall, Scott Rudin, Julian Schnabel, Tamara Jenkins and Jim Taylor, Bart Walker, John Sloss, Daniel Battsek, Mark Urman and others had a fine time.
Frances McDormand and husband Joel Coen were hanging with their 13-year-old son, who was experiencing his first Oscars. "They didn't buy it," she said of the Coens' Oscar wins. "They work hard. And will keep working hard."
[Photo: Ratatouille director Brad Bird with his wife and his Oscar on the way out of the Governor's Ball and heading toward the Miramax post-Oscar party at Bar Marmont.]
It started on Thursday night, with the first round of parties. Due to the driving rain, New York-based IHOP PR chief Jeff Hill hosted his annual indie-confab inside the Avalon Hotel bar, rather than poolside. Sony Pictures Classics co-prexies Tom Bernard and Michael Barker, SKE marketing guru Bingham Ray, MPRM's Mark Pogachefsky, Michael Clayton Oscar-campaigner Michele Robertson and a good crowd relaxed in advance of their Oscar weekend labors.
Oddly, Paramount Vantage and Fox Searchlight hosted pre-Oscar celebrations at the same weeks-old restaurant, STK on La Cienega. They couldn't have been more different. The Vantage party Thursday night was packed with 500-odd souls, chowing down on a buffet dinner and jostling to pay their respects to Paramount's John Lesher and Nick Meyer and There Will Be Blood Oscar nominees Daniel Day Lewis and Paul Thomas Anderson. PTA seemed in good spirits and told me he's been getting through this pre-Oscar craziness by focusing on finishing the extras on the There Will Be Blood DVD. He wasn't so pleased when the NYT's David Carr, aka The Carpetbagger, admitted that TWBB wasn't his favorite Oscar movie:
Mr. Anderson laughed for a while. And then he laughed a bunch more.(David Carr confirms that there was a "f**king" in there. But the NYT frowns on such language.)“You know you don’t know a thing about movies,” he said.
By contrast, Friday night's TSC Fox Searchlight affair was an intimate sit-down dinner party. Jason Reitman introduced me to Juno's on-screen Dad, J.K. Simmons. Ellen Page really is a diminutive waif. Diablo Cody was wearing a faux leopard-skin coat. Searchlight prexy Peter Rice whooped it up with The Savages writer-director Tamara Jenkins and writer hubby Jim Taylor (Sideways).
WMA's Cassian Elwes didn't go to Ari Emanuel's party Thursday night; his wife went instead. Instead he had a blast at Salma Hayek and pal Penelope Cruz's black-tie Night of Elysium party for about 200 at the Beverly Hills Hotel on a 40s theme, complete with a domino contest. Charlize Theron won.
I must take off to the Spirits and beyond. Will report and blog when able.
Good luck on Oscar night if you don't get a ticket to the Governor's Ball. Most of the action will be beforehand at parties given by Miramax and Paramount Vantage, the Indie Spirits and the IFC after-party, and BAFTA. Here's more from Variety's Bill Higgins:
And the annual Night Before party on Oscar Eve and the Night Before the Night Before on Friday should shine a bit more brightly in a less crowded field. This also applies to Saturday's Film Independent Spirit Awards.The party that had the most to gain from VF's departure doesn't appear to be taking advantage of the opportunity: Elton John's AIDS fund-raiser has said it will remain a viewing dinner with a Sir Elton perf afterward -- no after-party.
I'm shocked! Graydon Carter has cancelled the Vanity Fair Oscar party in deference to the ongoing--but on the verge of resolving--Writers Strike. Folks will definitely be in a party mood. Wonder who will step into the breach for post-Governor's Ball action? Elton John anyone?
Many of us press folks are getting inundated with this kind of email:
Subject: REMINDER - Outfest Queer Brunch, Sunday January 20 Hi all, Just reminding you about the 12th annual Outfest Queer Brunch this Sunday in Sundance at 11am[location]presented by here! Networks. Attending the brunch will be a wide range of stars attending Sundance, including Paris Hilton, Sharon Stone, Winona Ryder, Quentin Tarantino, Kirsten Dunst, Sean (P. Diddy) Combs, Dennis Quaid, Ginnifer Goodwin, Ellen Page, Hugh Dancy, Wes Bentley, Nick Cannon, and many others.
One colleague forwarded this one with the comment: "this is simply impossible, unthinkable, a kind of celebrity version of thermonuclear warfare...."
I want to thank the Publicists Guild for nominating me for the second time for their Press Award for entertainment industry coverage. I am in great company: Deadline Hollywood Daily's Nikki Finke, USA Today's Bill Keveney, Claudia Puig and Susan Wloszczyna, and Access Hollywood's Scott Mantz. I'll to go to the awards again and sit at my table anxiously wondering if I will have to go to the front of the Beverly Hilton ballroom and make a speech. (Last time I did not win.) I wonder if Nikki will show?
The Golden Globes will wind up as a one-hour live press conference on NBC with some kind of pre-show and lots of party coverage, reports Variety. This way NBC News will cover the press conference announcing the winners, to be aired January 13 at 6 PM Pacific. A proposed Dateline special, Dick Clark Productions clip show and Access Hollywood after-party coverage may be part of the package are no longer part of the package. There will be no lavish Globe Awards dinner, but plenty of Beverly Hilton red-carpet and party activity for the news media and Beverly Hilton parties are being cancelled.
The mechanics of the one-hour announcement itself are still in the air. The original idea was that at some point during party festivities the HFPA would stop the proceedings and make the declaration of the winners. Cameras would be poised on the nominees at the different parties, so that there would be reaction from Atonement's Keira Knightley, for example, at the Universal/Focus party. This concept was scratched by the WGA.
NBC was trying to sidestep the WGA by putting together a series of Golden Globes shows that were not WGA shows. The WGA did not go along with this idea.
Why did the Hollywood foreign press not stick to its original plan of putting on the awards dinner Guild-style without an NBC telecast? Word is, they simply waited too long to apply for a waiver and negotiate a reasonable solution. They couldn't keep their heads on straight when they found themselves up against the wall. The Beverly Hilton, caterers, designers, florists, all were calling every hour to find out what was going on. Everyone winds up with significant losses.
When the HFPA met Friday, they insisted on not taping or delaying the telecast. And announcing the winners as planned, no matter what. The once-planned banquet without a telecast was no longer possible at that point. For its part, NBC was holding firm against the WGA and didn't want to cave.
Monday the HFPA went down the road with NBC of trying to have four hours of programming that night, which would have been more lucrative than cancelling the telecast. But NBC, Dick Clark and the Globes wound up with just a one-hour televised press conference. And there are plenty of people unhappy about that. What everyone is left with is what one observer calls "a strange thing at the Hilton Hotel in January."
Everyone loves a winner. And one win leads to another. A series of wins starts to make actual Oscar nominations look inevitable. Thus the Gothams' breakthrough actor Ellen Page (Juno), having earned a Spirit nom Tuesday morning, continued her march toward a best actress Oscar slot; Spirit nominee and Gotham winner Michael Moore's Sicko is heading toward best doc, and Gotham best feature winner Into the Wild, which had too big a budget to be recognized by the Spirits, got some much-needed love. The Envelope lays out the Spirits vs. The Gothams.
The full list of winners is on the jump:
Continue reading "Awards Watch: Gothams Boost Into the Wild, Sicko, Juno's Ellen Page" »
The ongoing Murakami exhibit at the Geffen Contemporary is a must-see. I knew it would be fun, but I didn't know that this guy is not only a vibrant artist pushing the edge of what is kitsch, art, commercial and a complete sell-out, but he is also a filmmaker who wants to position himself in the global mainstream as the next Spielberg--someone he hugely admires.
Here's Peter Debruge on Murakami's animation work; at a recent MOCA panel organized by Variety, DreamWorks animation czar Jeffrey Katzenberg met Murakami for the first time and later brought him to DreamWorks for a tour, which caused some buzz.
Murakami churns out hugely expensive big-scale high art, sculptures covered in gold foil, as well as tiny collectible action figures, wallpaper, greeting cards, t-shirts and Louis Vuitton luggage:
MOCA shows Murakami's animated Kanye West Good Morning video, which is terrific. This YouTube shakycam version is all over the Web but is not official:
And here's the Kaikai & Kiki movie trailer--the animated footage at MOCA was cool:
The film in progress that they screened, a kitchen sink live-action view of youth in Japan, left me cold.
The MOCA description of the Murakami exhibit is on the jump:
Pity the poor filmmaker with an Award season movie to flog. If it's good enough to have a shot at some awards attention, then the distrib is going to make you do the rounds: the guild screenings and Q & As, the dinners, the AFI Fest, the Hollywood Fest, the Variety screening series, my UCLA Sneak Previews class, the Behind the Camera Awards--and that's just the beginning. As we go on there's the gauntlet of awards ceremonies, the LA and NY critics, the Board of Review, the Indie Spirits, The Gothams, the Golden Globes, the SAG Awards. The real horror is keeping the thing going all the way to the Oscars. If I were Julian Schnabel, I'd pack my PJs and head back to NYC right now.
On Friday night, after a long Miramax dinner, he and producers Kathleen Kennedy and Jon Kilik, screenwriter Ronald Harwood, cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, and stars Mathieu Amalric, Max Von Sydow, Marie-Josee Croze, and Emmanuelle Seigner all trooped onto the stage at the Fine Arts Theatre to talk up The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, for which Schnabel won the directing prize in Cannes. The hirsute Schnabel ran the show from center stage, wearing a skirt and fuming a cigarette.
Schnabel promoted the movie's soundtrack, and pimped Seigner's new record, too. It was important, he said, to shoot at the real maritime hospital in Berck where Elle editor Jean-Dominique Bauby had stayed after his stroke, to pick up the atmosphere, the accidents, the inspiration from the place. One day, Schnabel saw the tide going out past a big rock and arranged to shoot Amalric on it, in his wheelchair, a stunning image.
The movie is beautiful, poetic, moving. Schnabel pointed out that the precise, purposefully distorted mise-en-scene and messy POV shots by Kaminski involved virtually no VFX (except for a digital image of a butterfly coming out of a cocoon). Kaminski did all the superimposition inside the camera, by running the film twice. Amalric paid tribute to his fellow actors, who are amazingly direct and communicative when acting to panes of glass, as they perform straight into the camera. Amalric got huge applause from the Fine Arts crowd for his role as the paralyzed editor who emotes --and dictates an entire memoir--with mere blinks and twitches.
Von Sydow admitted that he submitted to a real close razor shave from Amalric--and got cut. And it was the first time, he said, that he had to deliver his first day's work on a film over the telephone. The scenes between Amalric and Von Sydow are among the most powerful; Schnabel had just lost his father when he took on the project, which was originally to star Johnny Depp. Kennedy and Kilik moved the movie over to Pathe in France when Universal passed. It's hard now to imagine it not being done in authentic French.
I ran into a smaller subset of the Diving Bell gang at The Highlands supper club on Sunday night, when Schnabel was the last presenter at Hamilton Watch's Behind the Camera Awards. Schnabel lectured host Anne Volokh, publisher of Hollywood Life Magazine, about the lousy acoustics in the room--"build a wall," he ordered her--then offered up his hearfelt tribute to his long-time producing partner, Kilik. "It's a great honor for him to be a friend of mine," he said, forgetting to give him the trophy. I think he truly meant it.
The Behind the Camera Awards were short and sweet. Jodie Foster expressed the pleasure she had "bathing in the light" of cinematographer Philippe Rousselot on Sommersby and The Brave One--which she found both "lonely and gratifying."
Seth Rogen figured everyone in the room probably had a crush on the ruggedly handsome Hamilton Watch guy, who was funny and hot enough for him to blow--but he hadn't gotten a watch yet. Rogen gave the screenwriter award to Knocked Up's Judd Apatow, who expounded (there being a writers strike, after all) on his sister's recent birth experience. She pushed her baby out in five minutes, he said, because "her vagina is huge."
Charlie Kaufman raved about production designer Mark Friedberg, who not only designed Julie Taymor's visually dazzling Across the Universe, but Kaufman's recently wrapped directorial debut, Synecdoche.
Jason Reitman, just returned from showing Juno at the Denver Film Fest, recalled running into his presenter, Rainn Wilson, at a Starbucks in Vancouver and asking him to work with him on an upcoming ninja movie. Wilson agreed to collaborate on the upcoming Bonzai Shadowhands.
Sean Penn described how long-time editor Jay Cassidy lived in a bungalow behind his house in San Francisco as they edited Into the Wild and was available to him at any time, 24/7. When Cassidy accepted the award, he admitted that it was true, and asked Penn to consider directing a comedy next time. "That's really hard," he said.
This is the sort of mutual backscratching PR opportunity that makes me cringe. Why give an organization a meaningless, impersonal star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, when peerless screenwriter Robert Towne routinely gets turned down because no studio is invested in buying one for him? This makes me crazy. It's such a waste of energy.
WHAT: Screen Actors Guild will receive The Award of Excellence Star on Hollywood Boulevard from the Hollywood Historic Trust in recognition of the Guild's significant contributions to actors and the entire entertainment community for nearly 75 years. SAG is the first labor union to receive this honor.The installation of the star on Hollywood Boulevard will be preceded by a celebratory champagne breakfast with red carpet arrivals at the Annex at Hollywood & Highland, hosted by the Screen Actors Guild Foundation and the Ford Motor Company.
WHO: The award will be accepted by Screen Actors Guild President Alan Rosenberg, Secretary-Treasurer Connie Stevens and past presidents Edward Asner, Melissa Gilbert, Barry Gordon, Kathleen Nolan and William Schallert.
It was David Cronenberg who realized how to play the infamous steambath fight scene in Eastern Promises. As written by Steve Knight (Dirty Pretty Things), the script basically said, "they fight with knives."
Cronenberg never uses storyboards, he told us at a Focus Features press party Thursday in Beverly Hills. That limits the actors, to just execute the moves you lay out for them. The director prefers to block the scene on set with input from the actors, then tell the camera crew what they've decided to do. He gave the actors carpet knives, figuring their characters could carry them in their pockets and tell the police they used them to cut carpets.
I was surprised to hear that the steambath fight scene--which features Viggo Mortensen fighting two vicious attackers in the nude--only took two days. It was really rough on Mortensen, Cronenberg said, because he had no protection, no padding, and got very bruised.
Cronenberg is not happy about the planned remake of The Brood and hopes it never happens. That's because it's one of those personal movies that was created by him. It's hard to imagine someone else remaking it. But he does not own the rights and there's nothing he can do. And yes, he remade The Fly. But he doesn't think that's the same thing. A remake of Scanners is also in development.
Here's NPR's Mortensen interview. And here's Movieweb's Cronenberg interview:
And Variety's New York screening series video.
Stu Van Airsdale, AKA The Reeler, is a tirelessly energetic blogger who will go beyond the level of endurance for the sake of his blog. Here's his description of working the red carpet at the New York premiere of Ang Lee's Lust, Caution. As someone who has been pummeled by too-aggressive paparazzi, I can relate. Which is one reason I rarely work a red carpet if I can help it.
Graydon Carter may reign over the super-slick glossy magazine Vanity Fair, but all is not as it seems at his trendy West Village restaurant The Waverly Inn, reports the NYT:
But on March 28, the restaurant failed an inspection with the city’s health department, with a total of 38 violation points. It takes a minimum of 28 points to fail. The restaurant was cited for nine different violations, including “mildew buildup” inside an ice machine; “facility conditions conducive to the existence of pest life” (this had to do with debris and old equipment on the basement floor); and the absence of a sign at the bar instructing employees to wash their hands. And the restaurant was reprimanded for not having adequate warning signs regarding first aid for choking patrons and the effects of alcohol on pregnancy.Also: “Mouse activity present in that approximately 20 fresh mice excreta observed on floor under flavor syrup storage racks in basement.”
The violations were not significant enough to order a shutdown of the restaurant, said a department spokesman, Geoffrey Cowley. “Once the restaurant score hits 75 points, the protocol is to determine whether a shutdown is in order,” he said.
There's something really surreal about watching Entourage on a Sunday and encountering the real-life actor Adrian Grenier (in the smoking tent) at a party on Monday night. The setting was a launch celebration for Robert Redford's new weekly Sundance Channel series The Green, which launches April 17. Redford himself was still filming Lions for Lambs with Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep; it has two days to go. The wine and bellinis flowed as eco-friendly indie prods, filmmakers, agents and execs listened to Macy Gray perform, resplendent in red satin. Marc Malkin has all the gory details.
[Photo by Getty Images]
Oddly enough, I didn't make it to the Entourage premiere Thursday night because I was honoring my commitment to manager Joan Hyler (who reps Diane Lane and Alfred Molina, and coaxed Peter O'Toole to come west for the Oscars) to help her teach her graduate USC film class in the super-moderne orange on white conference room at Endeavor (whose chief, Ari Emanuel, inspired Jeremy Piven's Ari Gold, and whose offices remind me of the airport in 2001: A Space Odyssey). She told them about mold-breaking ICM agent Sue Mengers; I talked about the subject of this week's column about the demise of Premiere Magazine and how movie coverage is migrating from print onto the web. This much Joan's proteges, the next generation of industry execs, agents and producers, already knew. UPDATE: Jeff Wells, Glenn Kenny and Kim Voynar respond.
Meanwhile, my colleague Cynthia Littleton, who will launch her new blog, Littleton On Air, next week, reports from the premiere:
"We may be whores...but we're not pimps." So says Ari Gold in a declaration of principle that is genuinely stirring, and laugh out loud funny, as only Jeremy Piven in his tenpercenter alter-ego can deliver in the second of the fresh batch of "Entourage" episodes set to bow Sunday on HBO. The first two episodes of the new season played very, very well for the receptive home town crowd that gathered Thursday night at the ArcLight for a screening followed by a premiere party down the block afterward at the Ivar. The life-imitates-art-imitates-TV tone was set by all the corporate branding on display at HBO's party, as skillfully mocked in the first of the new "Entourage" installments. (Vodka was the pour of the night, and this non-vodka lover warmed up to the concoction dubbed the Turtle, featuring a blend of orange and pomegranate juice.) The Ivar's many rooms were sprinkled with items from the show, including the life-size golf practice screen and practice putt set-up, a pool table and, of course, a few go-go dancers in itty-bitty metallic bikinis. Boys will be boys....
[Photo by Wireimage]
Tara and I had a great time at dinner on Saturday night at Lou's on Vine. While sampling some yummy ripe cheeses and Loire Valley red wines and listening to jazz, we talked not only to Lou Amdur and his wife, NYT film critic Manohla Dargis, but to USC's star professor couple, Howard Rodman and Anne Friedberg, and PR honcho Mark Pogachefsky and producer Neil Weisman, who has moved back to this coast after a long sojourn in London. It's been a year since Amdur opened the French-style wine bistro, he said. It's hopping.
Variety.com deputy editor Anne Thompson writes a weekly Variety film column as well as this daily blog.
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